


Blend

by Honicomb



Category: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Blended Dimensions, Body Positivity, Encouragement, Gen, Humor, Lighthearted, One Shot, Reader Encouragement, Two Minds One Body
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-19
Updated: 2018-07-19
Packaged: 2019-06-13 05:25:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15357225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Honicomb/pseuds/Honicomb
Summary: A brief story of how Gandalf hits his head and ends up with a girl-child, newly-born and of our realm, joining him in his mind. I wrote this for my best friend in order to offer some help with her personal insecurities. This is for Beth - and for anyone else who might need it.





	Blend

The whistles in the tree branches overcame the world’s great billowing noise, ransacking the dens of quiet creatures - squirrels, beetles, and wet, soil-dwelling things quite unlike anything he’d fancy stumbling upon - and the night was crystal clear with the sounds that spoke of bells and the fleeting nature of time. Gandalf’s staff, grey, chipping on each of its wilted edges, broke surfaces of untouched soil before his feet could hurry fast enough to reach. His weight was leant over on the thing and the entire stick was brought to a bend at its center as a result, precarious and dangerous to those whose minds were unwise; a jolly trait of a time-worn stick to the thoughts of the wizard himself.

Little in the forest would take heed of the peculiar state of the man’s eyes which shone a squeezed blue and reflected the white of the moon’s sparse illumination even through the bush of his hairy brows. His face was torn with heavy wrinkles and his gaze was set with a determination far too striking for one to dawdle on such trivialities. There were very few in this world who were intended to grasp the nature of this particular spree upon which our wizard embarked, as there were many such journeys to which his name could be attributed, and this one was well-dulled beneath the significance of all these tales. Nevertheless, no trail was too thin or too well-hidden for Gandalf, and any leaf worth turning was a leaf which the aging fellow intended to stir from its place.

Alas, there were things which even the wizard himself was powerless to avoid, and of this was a single  rock obscured by verdant grass and covered under wet arms of moss and greenery. Its black surface was slimed by the skin of a river salamander which crept from the waters that kissed the wet flower roots to the right of our protagonist of choice. Small, it was, yet it bore not any kind of stark insignificance despite its lacking size, a thing which the whimsical and Hobbit-ridden travels of the approaching wizard might perpetuate. It made a quick riddance of the staff which unknowingly prodded against it, and with the knob of wood was tossed the tall and aging body of Gandalf the Grey, his age-old cloak and all catching the wind of his fall with a flourish of colorless action before at once it was darkened in the waters of the weeping stream.

The mind of the dreamer was put to rest in the opulence of the warm river, and Gandalf’s hat sadly departed from him, washing ashore, large and dented, beneath the brilliant pinks and yellows of various foreign flower bushes which were drowned in water and light altogether. His mouth was open to the inhalations of fluids which by no means had belonged residing inside his fragile lungs in the first place, as the organs had been rendered weak already by his frequent indulgence in pipe-weed. The wizard’s body climbed not far in the stream, being held in place upon a small deposition of mud in the waters which caught the ends of his white hairs with numerous sticky hands, pulling at the hems and stitches of his cloak so Gandalf would not soon depart. While prodded by the fins of purple spoonfish schools which wormed beneath his sleeves and stockings, nibbling curiously on the mats of his wild, sopping beard, there was nothing which could shift the him and no qualities of nature posed a hazard but the threat of buzzing swarms in the warmth of the summer night.

Whilst occupied by this vulnerability, the most intimate of Gandalf’s thoughts and concerns were influenced by a thing which was decidedly unlike the world in which he resided. It was very much separate from the Shire and its heated pastures, cool in the throes of winter and sprinkled with flickering clover colors most of the year long. It starkly seemed to diverge from any such description conveyed in tales of autumn pleasantries in the green and lighted hollows of Valinor. It bore no worth comparing its mystery to the incomprehensible sprawl of nonbeing which was all to be discovered in the Void far beyond what, in his spanning lifetime, Gandalf had come to know.

It was a thing whose very existence was  unknown to the grey wizard and to any whom had ever taken part in his company or otherwise - a thing far more mysterious and intriguing than any word that had been spoken, parcel that had been traded, or magic that had been conducted in any form in what he understood to be Middle Earth. It was very alike in nature to the build and structure of men in Middle Earth, though it was never to find itself being held in the arms of a woman of Gondor nor a maiden of Rohan. It was delicate and strawberry-colored with the freshness of melons in a Shire garden, for it smelt of pastry sugar and its hair felt to the touch like the fuzz of a newly-stolen peach. It was a child - a newly-birthed child. It was very human.

And Gandalf could hear its thoughts.

Considerably problematic was this condition of dual-mindedness in Gandalf, as his entire brain began to be stunned with things which he’d never before perceived. There were tendrils of emotion explaining an incessant beeping noise accompanied by the visual of a flashing red light, though Gandalf didn’t catch sight of it - he could only be told of its presence. What had become a part of his conscious told him of anger and emotion in no words which he could decipher. The thoughts were merely vocalizations of an unmade mind, freshly sprouted from the inside of whatever seed they had been in before the lungs of their vessel had ever opened to take a breath. There was newness and triumph in these thoughts - confusion, too. And so Gandalf’s mind took this by the hand and he became befuddled in turn.

Much to the disappointment of the wizard, this emotion was immediately consumed by pain.

Seventeen years passed, a handful of lifetime for Gandalf's mental companion, but she and Gandalf had gone through many travels of their own, alas on their different ends of the universe, and Gandalf did not like to trifle with the brevity of the natural human's lifetime; it brought him undue worry, and after all, he had two people to take care of.  

Gandalf squinted an eye, looking at the stars behind the bonfire. There was an itch on his brain, just beneath his upper eye. “What is it you are doing?”

A brushstroke here, a pouf right there. Beth almost forgot to answer. “Makeup.”

Gandalf shook his beard and cast his eyes to empty heavens. “You did not inform me that you were seeking reconciliation with someone. Otherwise it simply passed my thoughts and left no memory behind it.” Then, more quietly, “By gods, I must be a million years old .”

“That’s not what I’m doing at all. It’s like painting your face. You use dyes and brushes and a whole handbag of other tools, not to mention colors.”

"That would explain the abysmal itch.”

“I can hear you.”

Gandalf allowed a humble laugh. “As I had hoped. Lo, the stars are becoming faint under these grim clouds,” said he. He pondered the dark for a moment; pondered it enough that his thoughts drifted and his eyes grew tired of it and he didn’t care about the coming rain any more than he cared about Elizabeth's so-called Blu-Ray DVDs. “Are you dressing for another theatre performance?”

“Not today.” Beth made an irritated huff. Gandalf had made her lose her focus on the brush and the ink.

“Then why do you dress yourself with inks?” Gandalf asked.

Beth stumbled. For a very moment, she lowered the brush from her eye, her gaze widening at the too-big, too-oily, too-haggard disaster that was in the mirror before her. She capped the brush, didn't screw it, haphazardly grabbed a new palette. She scrabbled at it with a wide sponge. “I’m trying to cover up the monster in my mirror.”

“Nonsense!” Gandalf snapped. “Put away your ‘tools’ and the ‘colors’ and seal them with the other countless things you’ll never need.” He was frankly beginning to grow unfond of the attractions of the the girl’s realm. This was not the first time that she had fretted over things as trivial as this. The very words she said made every inch of Gandalf  bristle.

Gandalf had fancied plenty far more homely people over centuries of time, and he’d never thought once of the aesthetic value of their faces or their structure - not even in passing . This social construct, while not entirely unknown to middle earth, was but a nonsensical mass of horse dung to him, and he detested it nearly as much as he detested trigonometry, which until earlier in the present year, neither he nor Beth had remotely known.

It was only in this moment that he noticed the air was quite chilly. The moment after, crystal rain began to inflict a stutter to the his flames until he tipped his staff and ended the fire himself in one measure. Caught in a frown, he set on the muddy path.

In the other realm, Beth’s instincts encouraged her to return the wizard a sentiment that was particularly unpleasant. But then she recalled what he had taught her before and the sheer miracles he’d created since. She held her tongue. “Why?”

“Why?” Gandalf allowed a moody laugh, and in its wake, he tucked away the bristles and the burdens. “Because I believe you to be quite beautiful,” tells the wizard. “But far more importantly, you are equipped with a bigger heart than I’ve ever observed in any single soul. You needn’t worry about such trivialities; such abhorrent distractions as ‘makeoop’,” said he. “You are a treasure, my girl. Without even a glance, that would be known as fact by anyone worth half of you.”

“Gand-”

“Chin up, Elizabeth, eyes open!” the wizard proclaimed. His thoughts were those of celebration, infectious. A pipe is pulled; an herb is lit. “Dear girl, you have happiness in your very palm. Be careful not to ball your hands with stress and tension, otherwise you will never find it.”

In the end, the night set and the day broke just as every day before it. Far across the reaches of any recordable time, Gandalf the Grey hollowed his cheeks around the end of a pointy wooden pipe.

Just as every other day before it.


End file.
